Consciousness

From Addresses by Martha Wilcox

There should be firmly established in the mind of every student of Christian Science that there is nothing that can produce consciousness. One can never go further back than consciousness because there is nothing further back. Consciousness is. There is nothing to God and man but consciousness.

God or Mind is infinite, indestructible consciousness at the point of causation, and He is infinite, indestructible consciousness at the point of effect, and cause and effect is one.

God or Mind is the name given to an infinitude of selfconscious Good, and because God or Good is conscious, this results in the infinite conscious idea of Himself which is man. If Mind were not self-conscious, He would have no idea of Himself and there would be no intelligence or man.

Unity of Good (24:12). A practitioner and patient used this paragraph almost exclusively while working through a severe claim. They both held to the fact that all consciousness is God, an infinite consciousness, and that this infinite God-consciousness was reflected in their individual consciousness; they both held to the fact that since their individual consciousness had its source in God, they, as effect, could be conscious only of infinite good. By accepting this consciousness as the only consciousness and as their consciousness, the false beliefs gave place to reality and the patient was healed.

We know only what is in our consciousness, and our consciousness is God or Good. The true idea of God which is man, is not only in consciousness, but is consciousness itself, and is the whole of consciousness. This God-consciousness was the consciousness that Jesus was, and was also the consciousness of “the perfect man in Science” that Jesus saw. If we only knew that the one infinite consciousness is always the consciousness of both the practitioner and the patient, then we too would see “the perfect man.” Jesus understood man to be an eternal, living mode of consciousness, as certainly as he understood God to be an eternal, living mode of consciousness. Jesus was eternally aware of the relationship between God and man.

Four days after the decease of Lazarus, Jesus came to the tomb, having excluded from his consciousness the beliefs of death, and time and disintegration. Jesus knew that such experiences were unknown to God or true consciousness, therefore they were unknown to Lazarus. Jesus knew that Lazarus, as idea, had never lived in matter or material body and had never died out of it. Jesus knew that Lazarus had no more consciousness of matter or dying than God had.

So Jesus commanded Lazarus to come forth. He knew that there was nothing in the consciousness of Lazarus that could say, “I am dead, and cannot come forth.” Lazarus and God were one and the same consciousness, and Lazarus came forth, exhibiting that one consciousness, seen to human understanding as the normal appearance of man. Infinite consciousness is never included in anything or in anybody, but consciousness always includes everything and everybody. Consciousness is always all-inclusive, even to the winds, and the waves, and the starry heavens. Anything and everything pertaining to a person or a thing that is real or fundamental, the divine Consciousness includes it.

There was once a student of Christian Science who found it necessary to make a trip around the world. He was far from enthusiastic or happy about it, expressing his fear of sea sickness, or storms, and the dangers of ocean travel. This student failed to remember that the beliefs about man, about the ship, ocean and storms, were all within himself, and because these beliefs were never external to his consciousness, he, therefore, had dominion over them. The practitioner reminded the student that all consciousness is God and that consciousness is all-inclusive good, that consciousness always has dominion, that the ship, sea sickness and weather could not think of him, but that he, being the true idea of consciousness, had within his consciousness these things only as they are fundamentally. This realization that consciousness is all-inclusive met the false beliefs for the man, and proved, also, that false beliefs could not affect realities.

Everything that God or Mind has formed is in my consciousness. Infinite consciousness is ever conscious of all its ideas and, because of this fact, all ideas are in my consciousness.

If I need an idea, I have it, and even before I conceive that I need it, I have it. Consciousness never has to recall something and it never loses anything. Every useful or desirable thing that we have ever needed or known, has always been present in our consciousness. Let us suppose that I desire to think of the name of some certain person. A realization that my consciousness is as all-inclusive as God’s consciousness is all-inclusive, dispels the belief in my consciousness that something is lost or absent when I need it.

This person’s name will be perfectly clear to me when I realize that there is someone present in my consciousness named “The Son of God.” Realizing that the person’s name is “Son of God,” causes me to remember that his name is James Brown.

Infinite consciousness is ever conscious of all of its ideas as they are in their reality. And the consciousness that you have NOW and that I have NOW, is this infinite consciousness.

Our human consciousness is true or false according to our understanding of scientific consciousness or according to our consciousness as false belief. If we understood that the consciousness that we now are, reflects or shows forth the one and only consciousness, then our consciousness is true. But if we believe that we are a personality, and include a consciousness of our own, then our consciousness is false.

In II Kings 4:42, we have set forth for our use an example of a consciousness operating as understanding, and another consciousness operating as false belief. This example of true and false consciousness is set forth when Elisha commanded his servant to feed the one hundred men with twenty barley loaves and some corn. To Elisha, whose consciousness was scientific understanding, all useful things, and necessary things, were never external to his consciousness, but were always in his consciousness and he was always conscious of them. All things were always intact, inexhaustible, always available to every one.

Elisha was not one of those individuals who, through some means, was going to bring good things into existence, or was going to be conscious of good at some future time. Elisha knew that if any good could ever exist humanly, it was because that very good already existed in his consciousness divinely, or in its reality.

To Elisha, all good and useful things were already in his consciousness; they were intact and available, and he was always conscious of them. In so far as Elisha was concerned, everybody in the then universe could have eaten barley loaves and corn day after day without exhausting them, because Elisha knew that the idea of barley loaves and of corn in the individual consciousness would still remain intact, unspent or not used up.

Take the number 2. Everyone in the world may use the number 2 at the same time, yet using it does not use it up. Ideas in consciousness are not subject to diminution or extinction because they are used.

There is never less than all good for every one of us. And where do we look for our good? In consciousness. That is where we shall always find it. The kingdom of good is within us and constitutes our consciousness. The consciousness of Elisha’s servant corresponded to false belief. He believed himself to be a personality with a consciousness of his own, and all things external to his consciousness. His belief was in meagerness, insufficiency, inadequacy, lack, a belief that anything can be used up or be limited in its extent.

The consciousness of Elisha’s servant was the human mind’s misconception of what good is and where it is. His seeming false consciousness was only his human mind’s inverted way of seeing and knowing what really were spiritual facts at hand and in his own consciousness.

As in Elisha’s time, so today, we can give to the world the concrete proof that the living, acting, spiritual ideas or facts that constitute our consciousness, if recognized and employed by us, can and will annul the false beliefs about these facts or annul supposititious consciousness.

Because Elisha recognized and utilized the consciousness that is scientific understanding, he gave to the world the concrete proof that the good which constitutes consciousness is always at hand for the individual to utilize, and is always abundant and unfailing. And today, as in the time of Elisha, Truth says to every hungry heart, “Ye shall eat, and shall leave thereof.”

The so-called material body is not something that fills space. There is only one infinite body, and the belief about this body isn’t another kind of body, it is belief only. Belief is not something, but is a belief about something. The only place we can meet belief is in the realm of mortal thought. If I believe two times two equals five, I must meet this belief in mortal thought. The belief is never external to thought. Let us consider indigestion. Indigestion is the identity of belief. That is, indigestion and belief are one and the same. Then I handle or meet indigestion as belief, and must meet it in the realm of mortal thought, because belief is never external to thought. Body has nothing to do with indigestion, except as it is the visible expression of what is in mortal thought.

All belief is without a believer. God or Mind is infinite Truth, and Mind cannot be the opposite of Truth and be belief. Man, being the reflection of Truth, cannot include belief. There is in reality no such mode of consciousness as belief.

Since the material body is belief in mortal thought only, the thing to do is to improve our belief about the body, and this is done by gaining a higher understanding of true body. A false sense of body must be replaced with a true sense of body.

Progress does not destroy a material body, it just dispels the belief that the body we now have is mortal and material and organic and structural. As we clear away our beliefs, there appears, to our sight and sense, our everpresent glorious body, the body that was seen on the Mount of Transfiguration.

A Christian Science healing indicates an improved belief about the body. When we declare facts of truth about God, we should realize that these facts or truth about God, is man, is body. God or Mind is man; God or Mind is body. The body is always the visible expression of the mind. Whatever images of thought are held within our mind, these images are visibly seen in the body, which is the expression of mind.

Whenever our body shows us that there is a certain image of inharmony in our thought, then we should immediately replace this false image in thought with the counterfact image or the Truth. This process restores health and harmony to our mind, which in turn is visibly manifested in our body.

It seems to us that it is the body that ages or grows old, independent of the mind, but man’s body or embodiment is but the garment of his thought. The body always visibly manifests the mind from which it is evolved.